Iryna Dmytriyeva posted a video early Thursday of her 4-year-old daughter, Liza, wearing green sneakers and happily pushing a pink stroller as they walked in the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia. Soon after, Russian missiles hit. Ukrainian officials confirmed Friday that Lisa was among 23 people killed in a Russian strike on Thursday that left her mother in critical condition, as images of their lives on social media and her final moments drew global attention and struck the all-too-familiar drumbeat of everyday violence. in the almost five-month war of Moscow. Ms Dmytriyeva and her daughter had an appointment that morning with a speech therapist who had taught Liza, who had Down syndrome, how to say her first words. Shortly after the video was posted on Instagram, a volley of Russian missiles hit the heart of the city, hitting a shopping mall, a dance studio and a center for children with neurological disabilities. Photos shared online by Ukraine’s State Emergency Service and verified by The New York Times appeared to show Lisa’s lifeless body next to the overturned stroller, which was spattered with blood. VideoCreditCredit…Instagram/lizilove The spokesman for the Security Service of Ukraine in Vinnytsia, Denis Zakamblouk, confirmed in a telephone interview that Lisa had died. As Ms Dmytriyeva recovered in a hospital – among 80 people treated for injuries in the attack, Ukrainian officials said – her story and the bond with her daughter, painstakingly chronicled on her Instagram account, served as stark reminders of Indiscriminate Russian attacks require against Ukrainian civilians. Ms Dmytriyeva’s Instagram feed was a lasting testament to her love for Liza, traced through posts depicting milestones, struggles and words of encouragement for other parents. “You have to educate yourself. The more resources the parents have, the more the child receives,” she wrote in a post a day before the attack. “Make your dreams come true!” Ms Dmytriyeva moved Liza from the capital, Kyiv, to Vinnytsia earlier this year, and signed her up for speech therapy classes at a center called Logoclub. Always smiling, Liza earned the nickname “Sunny Flower” at the center, her therapist, Alyona Korol, said in an interview. As news of the Russian attack reverberated around the world on Thursday, Ms Korol said she spotted a familiar pair of green trainers in photos from the scene. “When I saw those shoes, I recognized them,” Ms. Korol said. “I knew she was our Lisa.” Liza DmytriyavaCredit…Logoclub Children’s Center, via Reuters Images of the sneakers and stroller, which began circulating on social media in the hours after the attack, were held up by Ukraine’s leaders as an example of Russia’s disregard for civilian life. Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska said in a tweet on Friday that she recognized Lisa from a Christmas video she shot with children in 2021. “The little girl managed to paint not only herself, but her dress , but also all the other guys, me, the cameramen and the director in just half an hour,” he wrote while sharing the video. “Look at her, alive, please.” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his afternoon speech: “The child was four years old!” and blamed Russia for a litany of atrocities. “No other state in the world allows itself to destroy peaceful cities and ordinary human life with cruise missiles and artillery every day,” he said. Flowers and toys in Vinnytsia on Friday, the site where Liza was killed. Credit…Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters Russia has claimed it is only hitting locations of military value – even though some, such as Vinnytsia, are hundreds of miles from the front lines in eastern and southern Ukraine. In a statement on Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry said it had targeted an office building in Vinnytsia where members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces met with “representatives of foreign arms suppliers”, adding that the attack had resulted in the “elimination of conference participants . ” His account could not be verified. On Friday, people placed flowers and a teddy bear at the spot where Lisa was killed. An outpouring of grief filled social media. A support group that helps connect families of children with Down syndrome posted updates on Ms Dmytriyeva’s condition on Facebook and a link to a fundraiser for the family. “Today, our hearts are bleeding and our eyes are full of tears because our family of thousands has lost one of ‘theirs,’” the post read. “They were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
title: “Ukraine Russia War Breaking News The New York Times " ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-09” author: “Alice Stevenson”
More than four months after Russia’s invasion, the wail of air raid sirens warning of an impending strike has become, for some Ukrainians, a kind of background noise: unnerving, unsettling, but also possible to ignore. But a series of deadly missile attacks by Russian forces in recent days, hitting civilian targets, has changed the calculus, sending Ukraine’s leaders scrambling to reinforce the message that heeding the advice to seek shelter saves lives. “I beg you, once again: Do not ignore the air warning signals,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a national address this weekend. “Appropriate rules of conduct must be observed at all times.” Many people in Ukraine still do not have access to bomb shelters. In Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, officials said they do not plan to reopen schools in the fall, in part because not all schools have them. In Lviv, the western Ukrainian city near the Polish border where hundreds of thousands of displaced Ukrainians have settled, all new buildings must include bomb shelters. But many Ukrainians in larger cities have become not just complacent about danger, but too war-weary to worry about the threat of attacks. On Saturday night in Kharkiv, where Russian artillery strikes almost every night, young people at a popular bar drank at outdoor tables and listened to live music. “My neighbors go to the basement. Old people go, but young people don’t,” said one of the patrons, Maryna Zviagintseva, 28. “I think in the first month everyone was scared and would go down to the subway or somewhere,” said Vladyslav Andriienko, 29, a construction worker. “Now people are trying to live a normal life.” In the deadliest strike of the past week, three Kalibr cruise missiles fired from a Russian submarine in the Black Sea struck the center of the provincial capital of Vinnytsia, killing 23 people and injuring 140 others. Among those killed in Thursday’s strike was Lisa Dmitriyeva, a 4-year-old with Down syndrome, and two other children. The next day, at least 10 Russian rockets struck the southern city of Mykolaiv, hitting two universities, a hotel and a shopping mall. Later on Friday, three people were killed and 16 others injured when at least one rocket hit a target in Dnipro, central Ukraine. Anti-aircraft batteries shot down one missile over the Kiev region in northern Ukraine on Friday and four others in Dnipro, Ukrainian military authorities said. And on Saturday, a Russian missile hit a warehouse in the Odesa region, causing a fire, according to a spokesman for the regional military command, Serhii Bratchuk. He said there were no casualties because the security guards retreated to a shelter as soon as they heard the siren. A senior US military official said on Friday that between 100 and 150 civilians may have been killed in Russian strikes in Ukraine this week. Moscow denies it is targeting civilians in a limited military operation in Ukraine it says is aimed at ridding the country of Nazis. Ukrainian officials, however, say the raids are aimed primarily at spreading terror and are part of a genocidal campaign by President Vladimir V. Putin and his military. “This is the annihilation of Ukrainians as a nation,” Oleksandr Motuzianyk, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, said on television on Friday. “This is an attempt to break the spirit of Ukrainians and reduce their level of resistance.” Moscow’s recent military gains, particularly in Luhansk province in the eastern Donbass region, have been largely due to its artillery superiority, but an influx of weapons from the United States and other countries has begun to redress that balance. Mr. Zelensky said the situation partly explains the rise in recent strikes. “The conquerors realize that we are gradually becoming stronger,” he said. “The goal of their terror is very simple: to put pressure on you and me, on our society, to intimidate people, to cause as much damage as possible to Ukrainian cities, while the Russian terrorists are still in position.” — Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Jane Arraf
